She gave up a lucrative corporate career to focus on her NGO EnAble India. Founded in 1999, the NGO trains, mentors and, most importantly, lays the foundation for people with disabilities to find employment. Through EnAble India, Shanti Raghavan has transformed the lives of around 2.2 lakh persons with disabilities, across 28 States and 95 districts
Photo: Shanti Raghavan
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Public procurements are often riddled with large-scale corruption and inefficiency. To bring in transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement, which accounts for 20 per cent of the country’s GDP, the Commerce Ministry launched the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) in 2017. It has already recorded transactions worth over ₹47,000 crore, covering close to 2 lakh products and over 22,000 service offerings.
Photo: Government e-Marketplace (GeM)
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The world’s largest open application programming interface (API) platform, IndiaStack aims to take the benefit of technology to every individual in the country. The platform provides digital infrastructure to governments, businesses, start-ups and developers to develop presence-less, paperless and cashless service delivery systems. In just six years, it has catalysed 1.06 billion Aadhaar cards, 2.98 billion Aadhaar authentications and 150 million eKYCs — a testimony to the platform’s capability
Photo: IndiaStack
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These are the faces behind Bandicoot, the robot that removes accumulated sludge and plastic waste that clog manholes, and helps bring down deaths due to manual scavenging. The four are the founders of Genrobotic Innovations, a start-up that specialises in designing robots to address social issues. The firm has embarked on a movement called #MissionRobohole to replace men with robots for scavenging
Photo: Rashid k; Vimal Govind; Arun George and Nikhil P
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This 17-year-old, along with his group of about 10 friends, is on a mission to end open defecation. Now, almost every house in his village, Raipur Nayakheda, in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, has a toilet, and open defecation is virtually non-existent there. Mewada’s idea has now spread to over 20 nearby villages and is inspiring many other youngsters to take up similar issues
Photo: Pradeep Mewada
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Twenty years ago, he was called a madman. And a pervert— people couldn’t understand his obsession with women's menstrual hygiene. But Muruganantham Arunachalam set out to create a low-cost sanitary pad for women and made it his mission to ensure that every Indian woman has access to sanitary pads during her periods. He has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of women along the way.
Photo: Arunachalam Muruganandam
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Born into a weaver’s family in Jajpur, Odisha, Dutee Chand is a national record holder in 100-metre sprint. She also won India’s first medal in 20 years, in the 100-metre race at the Jakarta Asian Games in 2018. She is pushing the boundaries on other fronts too — and is helping to shatter gender and sexuality stereotypes.
Photo: Dutee Chand
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One of the six biggest space agencies in the world, the Indian Space Research Organisation made India the first Asian nation to reach the Martian orbit, and the first in the world to achieve the feat in its maiden attempt. ISRO has the expertise to design its own satellites and has inspired many developing countries to dream of space programmes. Most importantly, it has ensured that the technology it develops is transferred for the benefit of common man.